paper

Density scaling and anisotropy in supersonic MHD turbulence

arXiv:astro-ph/0502547 · doi:10.1086/430702

Abstract

We study the statistics of density for supersonic turbulence in a medium with magnetic pressure larger than the gaseous pressure. This study is motivated by molecular cloud research. Our simulations exhibit clumpy density structures, which contrast increases with the Mach number. At 10 Machs densities of some clumps are three orders of magnitude higher than the mean density. These clumps give rise to flat and approximately isotropic density spectrum corresponding to the random distribution of clumps in space. We claim that the clumps originate from our random, isotropic turbulence driving. When the contribution from those clumps is suppressed by studying logarithm of density, the density statistics exhibit scale-dependent anisotropy consistent with the models where density structures arise from shearing by Alfvén waves. It is noteworthy that originally such models were advocated for the case of low-Mach, nearly incompressible turbulence.

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